These past few days have been exciting, “culinary-ly” speaking. I have seriously been working on my Chinese cooking skills. Yeeeaa-eh. If only I can seriously work on my Chinese language instead. Pft. So, the item on the menu today was steamed fish.

Ingredients:

One catfish fillet

Soy sauce

Rice wine

Sesame oil

Salt

Sugar

White pepper

Minced ginger

Olive oil

Minced garlic

Procedure:

Marinate the fillet with some salt and sugar

Mix together some soy sauce, a dash of rice wine, a few drops of sesame oil and white pepper.

Adjust the sauce accordingly depending on the size of your fish and your taste preferences.

Pour over the fish into the steaming dish and place the minced garlic on the surface of the fillet.

Then, place the dish into the steamer (I used an electric steamer) and set it to 8-10 minutes.

Once it is done, fry some garlic in about one tbsp of oil and pour it onto the fish for extra flavor.

My humble attempt at making mee hoon kueh or flour cake soup. For some reason, the translation to English sounds really gross to me. Anyway, the process of making the hand-made noodles is really simple. Instead of the usual string-like noodles that we are used to, this dish uses pieces of dough as its noodles. Its kinda like using ravioli instead of spaghetti in an Italian meal. You get my drift. I formed the dough using all purpose flour, some salt and added enough water to form a doughy consistency. Then, I left it wrapped in a damp paper towel for approximately 20 minutes before rolling the dough out and peeling it into the soup to cook. I used some pork bones and fried minced meat to make the soup base. I know this is not the actual recipe (I read somewhere that we are supposed to use anchovies as the soup base) but hey, I am trying to clear out my kitchen here. Trying my best to delay grocery shopping and utilizing all the leftover meats I have in the refrigerator, I made quite an unbalanced meal this time around. When I do not see any greens in the picture, it makes me feel sad and incomplete. Am I weird?

As promised, I made the recuperating boy some chicken ginseng soup today. Ginseng is said to have many medicinal health benefits and is believed to help the body restore itself to health. This remedy is commonly used by the Chinese folks. In a good amount of water, I added a small piece of chicken breast, ginseng, kei chi (wolfberries), flat white Chinese herb (I have no clue what it’s called), some chicken stock, and a little salt for taste. Then, allow it to boil on a stove top or slow cooker until all the flavors have been incorporated into the soup.

Yesterday’s weather was sheer perfection. A beautiful day, lots of smiles and great company. What more could I ask for? The blistering cold seemed to be a thing of the past. At least I thought so. Today was a very dreary, cold and wet day. Ick! Minus the undesirable weather, everything else was great. Anyway, on to some superficial blabber. I love blues on my lids because it just seems to compliment my dark eyes so well. Using my favorite Mac liner in ‘So There Jade’ and several tones of blue from my coastal scents palette, I created a look that is perfect for a pop of color, yet subtle enough for everyday wear. Lovely.

p/s: achievement of the day – giving all my make up brushes a much needed bath.